Robert A. Karl - Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia

My first years of work on Latin America unfolded under the sign of two counterinsurgency wars. I departed the United States for my college study-abroad program on the night of September 10, 2001. I spent those next three anxious months in London, researching British counterinsurgency during the Malayan Emergency, while the United States occupied Afghanistan. Two years later, as I finished a thesis on U.S. counterinsurgency and development policy in 1960s Latin America, my graduate school recruiting visit coincided with protests against the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. The resulting fascination with the projection of U.S. power eventually drew me to study Colombia. I arrived in Bogot to begin my research a few weeks before lvaro Uribes second inauguration, as the war against the FARC had already begun to turn. Early the next year, the U.S. troop surge in Iraq ramping up, I would write the first kernel of a dissertation on the origins of the FARC.

Yet if my intellectual interests had thus emerged hand-in-hand with events in the wider world, my attraction to the topic of (counter)insurgency eventually waned alongside counterinsurgencys fall from grace. By the start of 2012, counterinsurgency was on its way out as the favored doctrine of the U.S. military; in August, the Colombian government and the FARC had announced an agenda for peace negotiations. By then three years out from the dissertation, still searching for a path forward to the book, I arrived at the question of peace at the precise moment that Colombias attentions shifted away from counterinsurgency toward the possibility of peace. I likewise finished revising this book just weeks after Colombian voters rejected the October 2, 2016, referendum on peace with the FARC. Though I counted among those who fervently wished for a different outcome, this extraordinary coincidence of timing underscores the importance of thinking about the mutual constitution of ideas and practices of violence and peace.

I have, of course, accumulated no small number of debts over this past decade and a half. As a confirmed archive rat, my first thanks must go to the numerous archives and libraries where I conducted research for what became this book. Several institutions and people deserve extra praise. The Archivo General de la Nacin became my home-away-from-home in Bogot, thanks in large part to the generous support of Mauricio Tovar, and to my fellow researchers, including Adriana Rodrguez, my archival fairy godmother. Fabio Gonzlez Castro has been my man at the AGN, research assistant, Bogot fixer, andmost importantlygreat friend. Armando Moreno opened up his home in Ibagu, facilitated my research, and has tracked down a number of leads since. Gabriel Escalante Guzmn and Nelly Flrez Cabeza welcomed me to the Archivo Central e Histrico, Universidad Nacional, and the Archivo Histrico de Ibagu. Back in the States, Michael Evans made possible a short but productive visit to the National Security Archive. Some of the material from the JFK Library used in this book dates back to my days as an archival intern under Stephen Plotkin, who remains a backer of my work. Thanks also go to the staffs of the Biblioteca Daro Echanda in Ibagu, the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogot, the Law School Library and Widener Library at Harvard University, and Firestone Library at Princeton University.

Research for this book was generously funded by Fulbright Colombia; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Foundation; the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard; and the History Department, Program in Latin American Studies, and University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Princeton. I was among the last in a long line of scholars of Colombia to experience Consuelo Valdiviesos expert support at the Fulbright Commission. At Princeton, Judy Hanson and Debbie Macy have helped things to move with as little administrative friction as possible. Princetons paid parental leave policy made it possible for to me complete this book while also caring for my daughters and supporting my wifes career.

My professors at Dartmouth College taught me how to be a historian and planted the seeds for this book. Marysa Navarro told me long ago that my undergraduate thesis topic could be a doctoral dissertation. I am so proud to get to share the book with her now. Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, the late Bob Russell, John Watanabe, and especially Emilio Kour further helped to stoke my interest in Latin America.

It is a testament to my graduate advisors that they did not blink when I switched countries in my third semester at Harvard. I owe an incalculable debt to John Womack Jr., who introduced me to Colombia and taught me to embrace a diversity of approaches and cultivate a deep appreciation for unnoticed detail. John Coatsworth got me thinking across big scales. Mary Roldns breadth of knowledge about Colombia, to say nothing of her scholarly and personal brilliance, continues to inspire. I am also fortunate to have learned from Jorge Domnguez, Carrie Elkins, and Akira Iriye.